The fourth event of the quarter continued on with the robust movement of events organised by the All Things Talent community in Bengaluru, where the HR fraternity from diverse fields came together.
The session commenced with a brief introduction of All Things Talent as a forum powered by iimjobs.com and hirist.com, for HR professionals to network and learn from experts in the field.
The event focused on the different facets of technology, balanced automation, the role of HR in the future and diversity and inclusion pumped with technology.
The Speakers at the event included:
- Rajeshwar Rao (Director, Talent Acquisition at EdgeVerve)
- Soma Pandey (CHRO at Firstsource)
- Navin Patel (Head of Talent Acquisition at Brillio)
- Anuradha Vellal (Talent Architect at The Coca-Cola Company)
- Aditya Pal Singh (Head Talent Acquisition India at Informatica)
The event commenced with Rajeshwar Rao sharing insights on the concept of balanced automation. “Think about how you can balance automation and how you can leverage it, rather than being scared about it or thinking that it will solve all your problems,” Rajeshwar suggested.
With all the rapid innovation and growth in the tech sector, there’s a looming threat common to all mankind: will artificial intelligence be replacing human efforts? Rajeshwar argued that “It is Intelligence Augmentation and not Artificial Intelligence. It is all about the set of rules that the person provides to the AI and how they work on the data.”
Rajeshwar concluded by encouraging the personnel to seek what they are good at and excel in it. At the end of the day, the choices have to be picked by us and we are equally responsible for our choices.
Next, Soma Pandey came on discuss the role of HR in the future and the digital age.
With markets changing hugely, business context is too, and organisations need to learn how to navigate the digital roadmap that is causing disruptions in the business cycles today. There is a need to acknowledge that there is change taking place and there needs to be a constant change and re-invention by the companies otherwise it would be difficult for them to survive. “Your internal dynamics have to change and therefore all across the employee life-cycle from attracting and investigating talent, managing and developing talent, engaging and retaining talent to organisation design and culture must change,” said Pandey.
Soma added that many believe that HR needs to play a role relevant to the new digital age by primarily focusing on being aware about what is happening in the market as a whole and in the industry in particular. “Unless the specific focus areas are taken as outcomes, what gets measured, gets done. If people’s payment is not linked to this, they will not be inspired to do it.”
Engaging further with the audience, Navin Patel took the que and focused on talking about Talent Acquisition with technology.
With primary engagement and dependency on technology having increased from about 20% to 80% in the present day, Navin talked about leveraging technology to making hires easier and more balanced. Automation of certain tasks give recruiters more time to focus on the candidates. Technology could be leveraged to conduct searches for employees who are in the market but not on portals. “Try to innovate yourself and live with it just as the technology is evolving.”
Navin also pointed out some of the downsides of technology, some of them that it lacks human emotion and EQ, and that a relationship cannot be built with a candidate the same way a human recruiter could, and who would invest time in candidates.
“There would come a time when people will get bored with technology and would seek a human touch. The whole point of recruiting is adding value to the table”.
Anuradha Vellal’s focused on her experiences in both the manufacturing and FMCG industries, analysing the competencies required to ensure their existence in the markets.
On the technology aspect, Coca Cola is building chat-bots to do the first level of screening. Though the role of women is under-represented in the FMCG industry, Coca Cola aims at providing equal opportunities to both men and women. Starting from talent mapping exercises to having a conversation with the hiring managers on the employment of women in various segments to providing training to men before women join the organisation, Coca Cola is on the spree of empowering women.
“We have built a new factory in Sanand which is fully automated and has women employees on the shop floor.”
Vellal believes that as an organisation and as an industry, there is a long way to go for them and the way to go about it is by looking at the best practices from the other FMCG industries to help build a diverse workforce.
Aditya Pal Singh then joined the discussion with some well placed advice: “Sourcing needs to be far more intelligent from a recruiting stand point. You must understand technology, if you don’t understand technology, you will not get there”.
Click here to read more about Aditya’s take on the Future of HR.
Several questions were raised by the audience for the panelists during the discussion.
On recalibrating people into a more digital transformational mindset and the leadership skills that would be required to leap into the future, the panelists had a similar array of opinions.
“It is agility that should be looked on” said Rajeshwar Rao. It is about first about the mindset. Until you adopt this, if you are agile and would be able to use the information at all stages. First the basic tools need to be embraced in order to build the connect.
“Keep things simple, how would you get the employees to use the tool on a daily basis. The HR does a roadshow of all the tools we have for them to accept the tools.” – Anuradha Vellal
“Walk the talk. When you are getting used to a particular tool and feel comfortable while using it, ensure that the tool is being used and being experimented with.” – Navin Patel
Adding to Mr. Patel, Aditya Pal Singh said “Embracing the tool is essential, otherwise you will become redundant. If I don’t use the tool, my team would also not use it, thus the team leader must support the team by inculcating change.”
The event was concluded with a token of appreciation being presented to the speakers present followed by a luncheon. We would further like to thank our speakers and the audience for making this event a grand success.
